# Emotional burnout of Medical Professionals #

We are not losing doctors to money.
We are losing them to emotional exhaustion.

A few years ago, a fellow in my unit quit medicine.

Top ranker. Gold medalist. Brilliant hands.

He did not fail.

He walked away.

He joined an MBA program.

When I asked him why, he said something I will never forget:

“Sir, I can handle long hours. I cannot handle losing people and then being blamed for it.”

Another story.

A junior doctor I knew did not quit.

He died.

By suicide.

After months of relentless ICU duty, litigation threats from a patient’s family, and public humiliation on social media.

There was no headline.

No panel discussion.

No prime-time outrage.

Just a quiet funeral.

And a department that moved on the next morning.

A third one.

A surgeon in his 40s. Successful. Established.

One complication.

Not negligence. Not recklessness. A complication.

It spiraled into legal notices, online abuse, and political interference.

He now runs a wellness retreat in the hills.

He says he sleeps better.

He says he feels lighter.

He says he does not miss the operating room.

That sentence should terrify us.

We keep telling ourselves the system is fine.

It is not.

Across India. Across the UK. Across the US.

Doctors are leaving clinical medicine.

Some go into administration.

Some into startups.

Some into pharma.

Some into tech.

Some into complete silence.

And some into graves.

We do not talk about that enough.

Medicine demands competence.

But it survives on emotional resilience.

And that resilience is being crushed.

Not just by workload.

By distrust.

By constant suspicion.

By the assumption that if an outcome is bad, someone must be guilty.

By the idea that doctors must be perfect in an imperfect biological system.

We are trained to fight death.

We are not trained to fight public outrage every time biology wins.

Here is what scares me.

When the best doctors leave, it is not dramatic.

It is silent.

Residency seats go vacant.

Departments become transactional.

Young doctors stop taking high-risk cases.

Defensive medicine rises.

Compassion shrinks.

Risk-taking disappears.

And slowly, the system becomes average.

Not because doctors became less capable.

Because they became less willing.

I have seen brilliant residents say:

“I would rather build a company.”

“I would rather do consulting.”

“I would rather move abroad.”

“I would rather do anything but this.”

These are not lazy people.

They are tired people.

Tired of carrying outcomes that were never fully in their control.

Tired of being heroes in pandemics and villains in peacetime.

Tired of being called greedy for charging fees that barely match the emotional cost.

And when a doctor dies by suicide, the conversation lasts 48 hours.

Then we return to normal.

As if nothing is wrong.

But something is very wrong.

Because when healers start breaking at scale, it is not an individual weakness.

It is systemic strain.

If you are a doctor reading this, you know.

You know the quiet replay after a bad case.

You know the insomnia.

You know the smile you wear in front of patients.

You know the fear of one mistake defining your career.

You know the emotional math you do every night.

Stay or leave.

Fight or fold.

Care deeply or detach completely.

We are not losing doctors because they cannot survive medicine.

We are losing them because medicine is becoming emotionally unsafe.

And when that happens, the cost is not borne by doctors alone.

It is borne by society.

Because the next generation is watching.

And they are asking a simple question:

“Is this worth it?”

If the answer becomes no…

the shortage will not be numerical.

It will be moral.

Doctors are not murderers.

They are humans who are burning out quietly.

And unless we acknowledge that truth, the system will keep losing its best people.

!